August movie preview: What you need to know about TMNT, Gran Turismo, Blue Beetle and more
Who says August is a bad month for movies? With Strays, Meg 2, Heart Of Stone, and an Adam Sandler film about a bat mitzvah, there's reason for optimism
Film Features TMNT
Barbenheimer is living up to its billing as a cinematic phenomenon and both films will still figure prominently in August. But the month also offers plenty of other multiplex pleasures. This, of course, wasn’t always the case. August used to be considered a dumping ground for cinema’s unwanted children. However, in the tentpole era, there are too many nine-digit behemoths and not enough weekends, so the summer movie season has slowly been extended into the eighth month of the year.
2016’s Suicide Squad currently holds the record for the biggest domestic August opening, a record that will probably not be broken in 2023. That said, next month offers an array of films. On the budgetary high side we have the promising (yes, it actually looks good) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, the cleverly conceived video game adaptation Gran Turismo, and DC’s Blue Beetle. But let’s not forget smaller releases like Casey Affleck’s melancholy story of musical redemption, Dreamin’ Wild, and the re-release of the South Korean classic Oldboy.
13 Comments
Ben Wheatley has already made a great movie: Sightseers. I would also recommend A Field in England, but that’s weird enough to be more of a niche taste relative to his serial killer comedy.
Tom Harper’s Wild Rose is surely more notable than The Aeronauts (much less some episodes of British TV). That film’s “Glasgow” was robbed of an Oscar nomination for Best Song.
Sorry, TGGP, you know the rule: the only people on the internet are Americans.
High-Rise isn’t any more American than Sightseers, nor is Aeronauts more than Wild Rose. Actually, the latter is more American than Aeronauts since Jessie Buckley’s title character complains that she should have been born in America as she strives to get to Nashville (and eventually makes it there), with the aforementioned song (despite its titular location) written by Americans (including American treasure Mary Steenburgen).
I’m intrigued by TMNT in so much as I really like the animation style. Don’t know that it will be enough to get me into a theater to see it, but I also like that they seem to not be ignoring the part where they are teenagers. Seems fun.Blue Beetle also looks intriguing but I need like 40% less George Lopez especially if he gets to riff as much as the trailer makes it seem like he might.
Including certified commercial and (arguably) critical hits like The Old Guard and Extraction as “questionable” Netflix attempts to start action franchises doesn’t really make sense.
As someone who grew up with TMNT, I’m still not sure why it’s a franchise anyone has interest in revisiting or why, for that matter, I still sort of root for a given reboot to be good. Regardless, go ninja. Go ninja. Go. I hope very few people still get that reference.
TMNT is a perfect example of a beloved franchise that has the potential to be great, but rarely is. We’ve had six big budget movies, and only the very first, lowest budget of them all is really any good.
The “gritty” one that was closest to the source comics and involved Jim Henson, so natch. I do enjoy the observation from one reviewer about the turtles in that movie being “never remotely convincing as teenagers, mutants, ninjas or turtles.”
I’m of the opinion that the original TMNT movie is one of the greatest if not THE greatest comic book movie of all time. The second one is fun for camp factor, but yeah the third was even more diminishing returns, the CGI one was forgettable and the Bay movies were awful (although they do include one of my favorite unintentional funny lines: “We’re going to drain every last drop of blood from them even if it kills them” or something like that).All that being said, this new one looks FANTASTIC! I love the art style and the voice work. Seeing it with my brothers, niece, and nephew this weekend.
I’ve seen the original so many times now, it’s hard to ignore all the little things like Leo and Raph going way out of their way to ensure that they never use their weapons as weapons. But it is a really great film, and deserves as much respect as the first Tim Burton Batman or The Crow get from that era.I recently rewatched the second film and it was bad. Like not a little bit bad, like this thing was rushed out and it is awful. The jokes are terrible and just everything that was good about the first one is lost, minus the outstanding costumes. The third movie lacks even the costumes. The CGI one went in the opposite direction – all the seriousness of the first film and none of the fun.I have really, really high hopes for the new one.
This looks like the shittiest of all shit sandwich months of movies I’ve ever seen outside of literally any February. How many times can I go back and re-watch Barbenheimer?
It may turn out to be crap, but The Last Voyage of the Demeter is intriguing in concept. In the novel of Dracula the Demeter runs aground at Whitby with all its crew dead (presumably Dracula fed on them during his voyage). I always thought it was too bad that story was just left implied.
Mother! is a JLaw film that has nothing to do with Netflix. The Mother is a JLo film (which was a perfectly serviceable action fime) Produced by Netflix.